An Ectothermic Species
by JoinTheDarkSide
Summary: Jim wakes up cold and Scotty has zero assurances, but in his quest for warmth, Jim stumbles upon a catatonic Spock. The only thing left to do is panic.


**A/N: Hey guys, so I'm still alive, I've just been busy with school. So no worries there. But yeah, don't take this fic too seriously, it's basically just crack. I got the idea because I was irritated when someone described Spock as feeling cold to the touch. I was just like no at first, but then I was like, what if? Of course, I know there will be so many inaccuracies, but eh, it's not meant to be serious in the first place. Well, I hope you enjoy this, and as usual, I do not own the characters, Gene Roddenberry does.**

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Jim woke up that morning with his blankets wrapped around him in a tight burrito. His breath came out in a puff of white and there were goosebumps running up and down his arms. He struggled his way out of his bed only to attempt to crawl back in when the cold air hit him. His lungs felt like they were being poked by spikes of ice as he scrambled his way over to the wardrobe to pull on the warmest clothes he had.

"Computer! Increase temperature to 25 degrees celsius."

"Temperature at 25 degrees celsius." Was what he heard chimed back at him. He knew something had gone wrong, so he commed Engineering.

"S-scotty? What's going on?" He forced the words through chattering teeth.

"Oh! Good morning Captain!" Scotty's cheerful voice chirped at him. "There's no need to worry, just some glitches on the ship's Climate Control. Everything'll be back to normal in a jiffy."

"Well, what happened?"

"No, no. No need to worry about anything, Sir. Everything will be fixed soon." At that, the communication line was cut off leaving a very confused Jim standing in the middle of his freezing room.

Despite already wearing several layers of clothing, Jim was still mildly uncomfortable and was desperately wondering what he could do to improve his situation. He didn't think it had ever gotten this cold at the Academy. Walking to the bathroom, he wondered if a warm shower would fix it, and he drooled over the thought of warm water covering him from head to toe protecting him from the cold. But then the daydream continued, and as his dream self walked out, a sheen of ice covered his skin and Jim shivered and shook himself out of it. His daydream was right, getting himself wet would only make him feel colder than staying dry.

A slightly warm breeze brushed his toes and his head snapped up. There in front of him was the door leading to Spock's room. He shuffled closer and wedged his fingers into the crease that the door made with the wall. Spock's room was kept at a temperature much closer to that of Vulcan than his room. It made sense that it would take longer for it to cool down.

He thumped on the door hoping that Spock would be kind enough to open it for him, but after a few minutes of silence, Jim began to grow worried. It was out of character for Spock to still be asleep at this time, and he was a light sleeper. The knocks should have awoken him even if he was still dead to the world. Pressing his ear against the door, he could not detect any movement in the other room.

"Computer, Captain's override."

The door slid open and a blast of warm air hit his face. It was perhaps five degrees warmer in Spock's room than it was in his. He crept in, feeling slightly guilty about barging in like this, but assured himself that Spock would have been alright with it in the case where something _had_ gone wrong.

"Spock?" He nervously warbled out into the eerily still room. Jim looked around the room but there was no Spock in sight.

However, when he turned to the bed, there Spock was, in his usual sleeping position, on his back, body straight. For a moment, Jim sighed in relief. Spock was safe, just dreaming, lost to the world. He walked to the bed and smiled at the peaceful look Spock's face took on when he was sleeping, but the mischievous part of him wanted to mess up that peace in the loudest manner he could think up. His hands twitched but instead, he brought them up to smack his cheeks.

He reached out and poked Spock's forehead while calling out his name in a boisterous, bordering on loud, manner. When Spock didn't wake, Jim became suspicious. He looked hard at the sleeping Vulcan before noticing that his chest was barely rising. His finger tingled with the memory of cold skin and Jim pressed his cold palm to Spock's head. He was really cold.

With this heart beating in his ears Jim scrambled to comm for Bones, begging for the other man to be awake and to pick up quickly.

"Jim, this had better be important." His friend's familiar but grumpy voice snapped at him.

"Spock won't wake up. I think something's wrong."

"What, where are you?"

"I'm in his room, hurry up." He said back in a panic.

Bones hung up instead of replying, but Jim knew the other man was on his way. Soon enough, the front door opened and in walked Bones with a tricorder in hand. Jim had been pacing the sides of the room as the temperature steadily dropped. Without sparing a word for his captain, Bones made his way to the bed and scanned Spock for abnormalities.

"Well, it doesn't look like there's anything wrong with him physically, but his heart rate is low, and his internal body temperature is too." Bones muttered to himself, scowling the whole time. "This was the worst time for something like this to happen, people are falling ill left, right, and center."

Bones let out a harrumph before doing a double-take at his tricorder.

"What, what is it?" Jim asked.

"Hmm, just a suspicion." Bones said before murmuring under his breath. He frowned and looked gravely at Jim. "It seems that the environment may be too cold for his body. It's going into some kind of hibernation in order to stay alive."

"Oh, so everything is fine? He'll just go back to normal once the ship's climate control is fixed right?"

"Not quite, it depends on how long it'll take Engineering to fix things and how long it'll take for his temperature to rise back up to normal standards, but there's a chance he may starve."

Jim's face stilled in shock before he abruptly grabbed his communicator.

"Scotty, how long till climate control is fixed?"

"I don't rightly know Captain. We're just trying to figure out what the problem _is_ right now."

"We need to speed things up, get everyone involved, anyone who might know anything about fixing this. Whoever you need, just get it done."

"Aye Captain. Right away."

Jim started pacing the room again one part to warm himself up, but mostly to help him think.

"Bones, is there anything we can do to get him to wake up earlier?"

"Well, I guess we would have to bring his temperature up."

Jim was silent for a while before rushing to the replicator and messing with it. He came back with some shiny material and pulled the covers away from Spock before attempting to wrap him up in the material.

"What are you doing? What is that?" Bones shouted.

"It's Aluminium foil! It keeps in heat! So Spock can accumulate his body heat until it's warm enough for him." Jim explained.

"Dammit, Jim! Vulcans are Ectothermic! It means they-"

"Don't produce their own heat. I know that it's basic biology. But then what do we do?"

After a short beat of silence, Bones spoke up.

"Jim, strip."

"What?"

"Get out of your clothes Jim."

"Why Bones-"

"Dammit, no Jim! We get out of our clothes and share our body heat with Spock. Once it gets to a certain temperature, Spock will wake up, at which point, we force him to the gym to exercise and everything will be fine." Bones gritted out.

"I was just teasing," Jim said as he got rid of his shirt.

"Just get on with it."

The two of them stripped down to their underwear before crawling into the bed on either side of Spock. It was uncomfortable, the bed was only meant to house one person but now had to accommodate two extra bodies in it. But the closer the better in this case.

Jim pulled the aluminium foil around all three of them and then the blankets on top of that. They cuddled closer, both blanketing half of Spock's body as well as they could.

"Wake up Spock," Jim whispered in his ear. "Don't you die on me now."

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 **A/N: I am so so sorry for the ending, anything further just felt wrong to me.**


End file.
